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Page 20 august 7,2011 StarNews www.starnewsga.com YAHM front page 15 major leaders in the Philadelphia aristoc racy who were meeting no more than blocks away at an early Congress repre senting all the colonies. A group of men who were interested in forming an anti slavery society had gathered to discuss Paine’s pamphlet, “African Slavery in America”. The well- dressed and well- connected group had pictured Paine as one of them, another aris tocratic intellectual, not the common man dressed in plain Quaker clothes that stood before them. Slavery was the topic but, as it turned out, not the only one. While the mass of artisans, mechanics, day laborers and many small farmers were ready to imme diately take steps toward independence, many of the members of the colonial aris tocracy were not ready to follow Paine down the road to independence. They feared independence would bring an end SCOTT from page 15 every class night and over the weekend. She only gave you credit for problems you got the correct answer to, and she didn’t grade on the curve. At random each day she had some of us put homework prob lems on the blackboard. (Yes, it was black and you wrote on it with chalk.) Almost designing a bridge correctly, she , said, isn’t good enough. How you become capable of getting correct answers in the real world where it counts is learning how to do it in school. She built your self esteem by requiring that your achieve ments entitle you to respect yourself. My only criticism of her is that she didn’t require us to read the proofs in our text books, which I found to be very useful. It probably will not surprise you that the only people who signed up for her classes were students who wanted to really leam math. None of my other teachers helped me later in my life as much as she did. PAK from page 15 over any other consideration. The idea of society bound by contract may sound too cold and calculative to some of those of the Confucian tradition. But the social contract is the basic fabric of modem society. It is a part of the capitalistic economy that pro duced prosperity worldwide. Those who cling to the closed commu nity of ethnicity expect extended family members - grandfathers and grandmothers, uncles and aunts - to honor the old Confucian code and bestow permanent favors to nephews, nieces and cousins. But those who learned American pragmatism moved forward beyond this dictum of Confucianism. They hold individualism close to their heart and disdain dependency on others, including family member. They became Americans of Korean origin. The cultural clash produces such sarcas tic remarks as, “Is money thicker than blood?” Against the challenge, the Americans by choice would respond, “Don’t waste your time trying to compare apples and oranges. They don’t compare even in today’s Korea.” How this argument is going to play out in the end will be interesting to watch. to the rule of the upper classes in America and said it sounded to them like mob rule and anarchy. In any case, many of them owed allegiance to England as much of their businesses and trade, not only with England but France and Germany, depended on the Monarchy’s largess. They reasoned it was a better bet to bear the tyranny of the British government than to risk their property and posi tions on a democratic upheaval in America. When Paine addressed the issues of commerce and how the English did not permit the colo nies to manufacture products, only to sell the raw materials (furs for hats, iron to be worked into finished forms, for example), Governor Morris of New York had stomped out of the room mumbling “tre ason” under his breath. Paine had put it plainly as he always did. He stood, and the rationale poured from his heart. He was an Englishman and knew how duplicitous the monarchy could be. The Boston harbor had been sealed off, warships all around, troops on the ground, nothing in or out, and held for ransom to avenge the tea tossed in there. Make no mistake folks, this was not about the tax. The colonists had said plainly they would gladly have paid the tax were they being represented in Parliament and a fair por tion of the money coming back to their own government, a government they were forbidden to have. It was about consent. The current Tea Party uses their name to suggest that our government is as illegiti mate as the unelected English Monarchy and implies there is something fundamen tally wrong with taxes themselves. In Paine’s long list of “abuses and usurpa tions” contained in the Declaration of Independence, taxes are not even men tioned until the 17 th item, and then, not as a complaint about taxes, but about con sent. No question this was about freedom and an American government to pass laws of their own not passed across an ocean by people who had no idea or cared about their needs and values. These men were not anarchists; they wanted to pass laws, not repeakhem. They were not against government; they wanted government by consent of the people as Lincoln so eloquently pointed out “four score and seven” years later. It had started as a desire to be represented in the English Parliament. After all these people were, in their minds, still Englishmen. But as they were coldly and ruthlessly rebuffed by King George, the cry for a government of their own grew louder and louder as Paine’s Common Sense spread throughout the colonies. The colonists were about to test the Monarchy’s heavy, tyrannical hand. Next month: Part 3, the final column. Common Sense spreads. War! Paine writes “The Crises” and joins Washington at Valley Forge. Paine and Franklin write the Pennsylvania Constitution. 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